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babel
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# Posted: 1 Apr 2009 23:16
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who fancied a fight with a polar bear. The bear had to be named Kevin or it just wouldn't be the same, now would it. I'm surprised I had to remind you all of that. Don't you read National Geographic? Very well up on fighting polar bear names, is National Geographic. I know that and I'm British. Anyway.
The penguin, who was called Arthur, also read National Geographic. Well, he did sometimes as his subscription didn't always arrive. Those cheeky robbing albatrosses would nick his copy before he'd had chance to read it. They're bad for that. Just because they have that biiiiiig wingspan and those evil looking beaks they think they can do anything they want. Talk about attitude! Arthur didn't like albatrosses. Not even the cute one who wore the pink mini skirt and the heavy mascara. He was a traditional penguin and he considered such gaudy displays the sign of a trollop.
So. Arthur lived at the opposite pole to polar bears. BUT he'd read about them in National Geographic and so, he packed up some fish in a bundle and set off on his long journey.
Across the antarctic ice he went.
Into the antarctic ocean he glided, and swan and swam and swam.
Onto dry land at Tierra del Fuego he stumbled, clambering and hopping over rocks (for he was a rock hopper penguin, dontcha know) until he reached a road. He thumbed a lift. Well, that's not true, it can't be, can it? Penguins are not well known for having thumbs. There's a reason for this: they DON'T have thumbs. Hence them not being well known for it. Instead he had to flap a wing as only penguins can, in that stunted, barely flapping way of theirs.
Three weeks.
THREE WEEKS.
That's how long it took Arthur to get a lift. It was in an ice cream van driven by a cross dressing man named Gertrude. Conversation was, understandably, on the light side. There was Arthur, a penguin, and there was Gertrude, a man wearing a lovely gingham dress. Different people. Different worlds. They had nothing in common. Gertrude didn't even like to go fishing. The horror!
Arthur's journey took many, many months. He braved untold dangers. Dense jungles, crocodile infested rivers, freeways, byways, my ways, McDonalds, canyons, canons, cantons and cartons. None of these perils deterred our plucky, up-for-a-ruck bird. The only moment of doubt he had was when a girl scout attempted to sell him a cookie. The girl scout, in her uniform, resembled a vision in the penguin race memory of their Creator, Grandus Penguinus Kickarsius. So filled with terror was he on seeing this representation of his God that he considered going back home. But no. The vision of Kevin the polar bear was too large in his mind, the impulse to fight the beast too strong.
At length, Arthur noticed that the weather was turning colder. He had crossed into a country that the humans called 'Canadia! Home of the Mounted Beavers!' (Or was that 'Mounties and beavers? Arthur's english wasn't too good.) Thje cold winds came and the frozen tundra replaced the softer, more forgiving soils of the more southerly countries. It was polar bear country!
Arthur set to work. Mark I eyeball. That would do it! He walked and walked. He looked around him. He stopped for one of his (now smelly and very old) pre-oacked fish. He walked again. And carried on until CLONK! He walked inot a big warm mound of snow. Hang on. WARM? He stepped back and saw the mound of snow rise to its feet. It was a polar bear! A real, live, genuine polar bear!
Arthur pulled himself up to his full height and looked the polar bear dead in the eye.
'Oi, polar bear! Is your name Kevin?' he saisd in his high-pitched, penguin language.
'Blimey, this penguin's making a right old racket,' though the bear, 'I'd better shut it up fast or I'll never get to sleep.' He reached out with a huge paw, plucked Arthur up from the ground and ate him with a single gulp. Poor Arthur. If only he had known that this was Kieran the polar bear, and his cousin was named Kevin!
FIN
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polson
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# Posted: 2 Apr 2009 01:38
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You had me at "trollop". *lmao*
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babel
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# Posted: 2 Apr 2009 06:45
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It's a great word.
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kaela_donos
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# Posted: 8 Apr 2009 05:34
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 i like how the arctic and antarctic creatures are both British!  cute!
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babel
Member
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# Posted: 10 Apr 2009 12:00 · Edited by: babel
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The last of his kind. That's what he was - standing alone, the wind blowing through his hair, spots of rain hitting his face. He felt as though there should be some sort of thoughtful, nostalgic, yet heroic music playing in the background. You know the type . . . depicting the hero's sensitive and tortured side, the horrors he had wittnessed, and his courage and tenacity in overcoming it all.
A hero.
He didn't feel like one. After all, he was the only one left. No one else had made it. What was the point? He couldn't breed (even though a few people had told him to 'go **** yourself!' plenty of times), there was no Eve to his Adam - it was game over. No monuments to his bravery, no speeches, no one even to remember him or his kind. How awful. How dreadful. How . . . lonely.
For he was the last person alive to still drink his tea out of the saucer in the town of Bletheringstoke-upon-the-Naze.
His grandma had passed it down to him - the ancient and revered ceremony. The tea was carefully selected. None of that expensive rubbish - PG Tips, Tetley's or Typhoo were the preferred brands. The kettle would be boiled, the teapot filled and the teabags (or tea leaves if you were a traditionalist) swirled around, before the pot was left to brew. On with the tea cosy - Great Aunt Ethel's multi coloured knitted affair , of course, which also had doubled as a garish yet warm hat on cold days - to keep the pot warm.
Next, the cups and saucers would be brought out. Chipped ones were best, though the handles had to be intact. Anything else just wasn't proper. Chipped tea sets were at a premium in Bletheringstoke-upon-the-Naze, with perfect, non-chipped sets being offered at knock down prices due to 'lack of damage'. It was a sign of social status that you could afford the pre-chipped sets.
The milk would be poured in along with hideously heaped spoons of sugar. Then out would come the tea strainer - if leaves had been used - and after a strictly-observed five minute 'brew' period the tea would be poured. Care would be taken to slop the tea about so there were drips down the side of the cups but this betrayed the true purpose of the cup - as a mere staging point for the tea. For grandma would carefully raise her cup, pour a little into her saucer and slurp the tea down. She would replenish the saucer at intervals and merrily slurp the rest of the tea down, a little at a time, and often.
Thus was the ancient ritual observed, handed down from generation to generation. Timjohn had been taught well by his grandma and his mam and was a strict adherent to - one might say master of - the ceremony. For years he had happily drunk his tea this way, seeing other family members, friends, neighbours, even priests and slaughterhouse men, drink their tea in this time-honoured tradition. Then it all changed.
Timjohn was walking down the high street one morning, whistling a tuneless tune. He passed by the crockery shop, stopped, and frowned. There was something not quite right about the window. Something out of place. Like when an orchestra is playing a piece of music and the tenor sax is out of tune, or if you'd put your playlist on 'shuffle' and that Jive Bunny record you'd downloaded in a quiet lonely moment came on to embarrass you in front of your friends. Timjohn went back to the window and immediately found the source of the discord.
A big cup.
Called a mug.
WITHOUT a saucer.
Timjohn gasped at this blasphemy. A cup without a saucer? What next? Newspapers in full colour? A female Prime Minister? A T-Mobile phone that actually got a signal? Timjohn was outraged. He pulled up a cobblestone and hurled it through the window of the shop, shattering the mug. The shopkeeper rushed out, shouting and gesticulating and tearing his hair out. Well, tearing his wig off, anyway, but since it was a bright ginger curly wig he was probably better off without it, anyway.
Within moments the local constabulary had arrived to cart Timjohn off to the local nick. 'You can take away my saucers,' he yelled, 'but you can never take away my freedom!' A crowd had gathered and the saucer-slurpers harangued the coppers as they bundled the martyr into the police van. As the van sped off they turned their attention to the crockery shop, where the (now bald) owner was attempting to hide the other mugs. The crowd went berserk. They charged the shop, smashing the stock to pieces in an orgy of destruction. They set fire to the place and, lighting conveniently-placed torches and brandishing pitchforks which had been even more conveniently-placed next to the torches, went on a rampage through the town.
No house was left untouched, no office canteen was left unabused, no workman's morning left unmolsted and un-inspected. The new-fangled blasphemy of the mug must be purged! Timjohn was freed from his cell by the mob and proclaimed their leader. In a rally in the town centre they waved their saucers defiantly at the townsfolk screaming ululating war cries.
There was, inevitably, a backlash. The people of the town actually quite liked drinking out of the larger mugs and found the idea of drinking out of a saucer rather archaic. They mobilised, organised and fought back against the saucer slurpers. It was a long, bloody war and Bletheringstoke-upon-the-Naze became something of a no-go zone for outsiders. Families were split, years-long friendships forgotten, a whole community divided.
Of course, the muggists wore the slurpies down by sheer weight of numbers. You can't stop progress and presently only Timjohn was left, much as we found him at the beginning of this sorry tale. He thought back ove the war he himself had started - of the friends he had lost, of the terrible moment the muggists had burnt Great Aunt Ethel's tea cosy - with her still wearing it - of the carnage, the senseless waste and destruction. He couldn't live with it any more. It was time. He stuck his jaw out squarely, firmed his resolve and he performed the final act of a Bletheringstoke-upon-the-Naze saucer-slurper.
He took a swig from a mug.
And it was good.
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babel
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# Posted: 14 Apr 2009 18:25
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'Look at the people. Look at them.'
'Erm. Yeah. People. So what?'
'No. you're not listening. Look at them.'
'What am I looking at?'
'Them. What they're doing. Their expressions. Their body language. Everything.'
'You're freaking weird. It's a load of people. So what? They're just normal. They're doing normal things.'
'Yes! Yes, absolutely! All of them, doing things they do every day. And that's what's extraordinary!'
'What's extraordinary about reading a paper? Or falling asleep on a train? Or barging through the crowd cos you're late? Show me someone hopping along on one hand, or leaping the road "with but a single bound!" or, oh I dunno . . . playing a glockenspiel on wheels while maneuvring through the rush hour traffic while being chased by rabid rhinos, that'd be extraordinary.'
'Ok. Let's look closer. See that man?'
'The one with the black jacket and the white shoes?'
'No, thr man next to him in grey.'
'Oh. I didn't notice him.'
'I didn't think you had. Ok. Look at him. What do you see?'
'I see . . . a man in grey. He looks grey himself. He's sat there, on the bench, doing a crossword or something . . . he's, uh . . '
'go on?'
'He's frowning . . . in concentration, I suppose . . . oh, hang on . . . he's finished writing, it looks like . . . he's smiling!'
'So what does that tell you?'
'He's finished his puzzle. He's happy. He's standing up. Oh, that's weird.'
'What is?'
'He doesn't look grey any more. He looks more - visible. He's still got grey clothes on but the guy himself looks more . . . oh I dunno . . alive. He's walking off with a spring in his step. I like that!'
'Good! Now. Look at that woman. The one pushing the pram.'
'Woman? She's more of a girl. Can't be much out of her teens, if that. She's pushing a pram along, she looks tired . . the baby is crying, I can hear it from here. She looks on the edge there. '
'Yes, I'd say she does look like that, yes. Can't be easy,can it?'
'Being a teen mum? No, I suppose not. Still, she's putting one foot in front on the other, jiggling the pram as she walks along. Maybe it'll soothe the baby back to sleep.'
'Maybe. She looks like she's done it before.'
'I see hundreds of teen mums just like her and they're just . . . you know. Just another teen mum. Some girl who got herself knocked up and is bringing up a kid on state benefits. But looking at her, she's doing her best, you know? She's getting on with it.'
'That she is. Now look at him.'
'Who? Who're you pointing at - oh him?'
'Yes, the guy in the flourescent green tabard.'
'Oh those lot annoy me. They try to stop you walking along to tell you about this charity or that charity and get you to donate blah blah blah. They annoy the hell out of me.'
'Well, maybe but look at it this way. It's his job to get out there and tell people who don't want to hear all about the charity that's hired him. But this one is trying something different. Watch.'
'Ok . . . hey. He's drawing a cross on the pavement . . . he's talking to that girl - pointing at the cross - she's standing on it! He's giving her a broad grin and she's laughing! Ok, he's good, I'll give him that. He's talking to her now, showing her his clipboard and all the stuff he has but she's open, receptive, cos he broke the ice and made her laugh.'
'Yeah. He'll do that a lot today. He's not jsut trying to stop people wlaking along, saying "excuse me!", he's engaging with them and making them happy. Not a bad thing, eh?'
'No. Not at all. Look, I have a question for you.'
'Fire away.'
'Do you do this a lot? Watch people?'
'Yes, I do. Because although these people aren't top sports stars of actors or tightrope walkers or anything like that, if you look closely enough they all have a story to tell, all have something going on if you only look closely enough.'
'Neat. Hey. do you think anyone's watching us?'
'Well, yes. There's a girl over there who's been watching you for a few minutes now. She's hiding it but - little bashful glimpses every so often.'
'Wow. I'd totally have missed that!'
'People watching. It's a skill you should learn.'
'Thanks. I will! But right now, I have a girl to go and talk to!'
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babel
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# Posted: 21 Apr 2009 17:56
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H'mm. Toying with the idea of writing more about the adventures of the Starship Hood. Doubt any of you will have read the original . . maybe I'll do it and publish it in here in parts.
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polson
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# Posted: 21 Apr 2009 21:24
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Okay...going back a story..."terrible moment the muggists had burnt Great Aunt Ethel's tea cosy - with her still wearing it " KILLS me...*lmao*
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babel
Member
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# Posted: 21 Apr 2009 22:27
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Pols, i went for a dollop of very down to earth Lancastrian humour. We tend to do the ordinary shot through with surreal black humour. Glad that I gave you - and claire too, as she told me! - a laugh
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polson
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# Posted: 21 Apr 2009 23:03
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Gotta say, I really do like your writing.
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babel
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# Posted: 21 Apr 2009 23:05
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Why thankee kindly, ma'am!
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jd
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 18:16
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Oddly enough, I DID read the original Hood piece, I rather enjoyed it. Admittedly, I read it years ago..*l*
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babel
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 18:25
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JD, you earn one slightly-tarnished silver badge with a picture of an otter on it.
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jd
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 20:57
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This is probably the best award I've ever won. 
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polson
Member
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 21:03
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I'm sick and miserable. I want another story!
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babel
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 21:12 · Edited by: babel
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A blog entry from a good while ago . .
Chorlton is a funny place - while it is a suburb of a large city, Manchester, it retains some of its village feel. That's what Chorlton was for many centuries - a farming village in the Mersey valley. The village green today is what remains of the common land at the heart of the village, belonging to the people - in practice this meant the land was used for many activities, including - up til about 1835 - bear-baiting. Beech Road, just off Chorlton Green, was the site of the old market and more permanent shops were gradually added. There are photos of Beech Road circa 1900 with horse-drawn carts and blacksmiths.
As Manchester expanded the township of Chorlton became a part of the city - but the meadowland and river valley to the south was protected as part of the Mersey Valley Green Belt. Therefore when I was little we still had some working farms - dad had to build a fence at the end of our back garden as the local farmer's cows kept wandering in!
It was great living next to the fields. Plenty of trees to climb, the river to visit, Chorlton Brook to paddle in and swing across, mysterious pathways to tread. We use to play out all the time - even when it rained we had dens to hide out in - even if it was only a broken fence panel leaning against the rest of the fence. In the summer we built dens out of the mown grass from the meadow behind our house, rolling it into great clumps that made up the walls. One long, hot summer we built a grass den with three concentric walls and as the grass compacted we simply piled more on. We sat in there and talked and ate butties and drank flat pop.
Of course, it was a magical place. Utterly magical. The local churchyard was haunted, quite rightly so! The church had long since gone but the graves were still there, protected by the lychgate (featured in the avatar I've used for this post) at the entrance. We never quite dared to sneak out there at midnight - I'm sure if we had of done we'd have found all manner of ghosts and skeletons (or, as we called them, skelingtons) lurking. As it was we had to rely on our imaginations and the dark, tree-lined paths, the many hidden places full of enigmatic presence and the dark shapes of the Pennine hills on the horizon gave plenty of fuel to my imagination.
There were also the strange lights. One night me and my sister, Jill, were looking out of my bedroom windows. She pointed out a light to me. I saw it too. Then another and another, unitl we could see six or seven, all low on the horizon. Perhaps they were, as my dad dismissively said, just lights being used by the construction workers building the M63 motorway the other side of the Mersey valley. Perhaps. And then my dad did it, didn't he.
One sunday afternoon he was tuning the radio - dad liked to listen to the radio - and he started to produce a whistling noise from it. Dusk was well and truly falling and we'd come in from playing out. Me and Jill heard the noise and dad frowned, saying sometihng like 'that's not right . . .' He fiddled more and the whistling changed pitch and frequency, until he said 'You know what this is?' We shook our heads, enthralled. He paused, looked at each of us in turn and then said, 'It's a flying saucer!' We thought back to the lights we'd seen and I swear our blood turned to ice in our veins. And then the whistling grew in volume and down in pitch and dad said in a very quiet voice, 'It's landing . . . right on the back field!'
We'd had enough. We were terrified and we hid behind mum's chair. Dad had scared us witless but in a completely good way. He laughed and told us he'd been joking and made us some tea and toast. Wonderful. Little things like that . . . it convinced me that imagination was a great, weonderful thing. To let yourself believe there is some mystery yet in this world of ours - that we don't know all that is knowable - that we have possibly only just scratched the surface.
Children instinctively know this. They are not bound by the conventions and limits we learn as we grow up. They are more open than adults and who's to say they're not more perceptive as well? To possibilties and ideas?
I don't want to ever grow up!
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babel
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 21:15
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the prologue to sometihng I was writing some century or other . . .
The galaxy was shrinking. Mankind had gone to the Moon and set up bases there, which had served as a springboard to Mars. Centuries of terraforming had rendered the red planet habitable to Humans genetically engineered to survive there. From Mars Humanity had spread further out, plundered the mineral wealth of the solar system. And, predictably, had grown bored. Bored with the planets. Bored with the planetoids, or planetettes, or whatever the hell they were designated this week - poor old Pluto had been reclassified so many times that it was no surprise to anyone when it simply detached from its orbit and buggered off by itself, the cosmological equivalent of 'sod you, I'm taking my ball and taking it away'.
This boredom and Man's insatiable curiosity - or greed - led to intense research into faster than light travel. Research teams from different countries raced one another to find a practical method of travelling to extra-solar planets. Massive budgets fuelled massive egos and these researchers became the new rock stars. Admittedly, the efforts of one doddering professor at the 'Live 1,0008' concert to run on to the stage and powerslide into a guitar solo met with justifiable derision and the viral video 'DON'T THINK AND SLIDE' was the hit of the year.
In the end, though, it was Ethel Briggs of Scunthorpe who stumbled upon the solution to the problem. Ethel had bo education, no qualifications, no super-computers churning out statistics and crunching through calculations. Oh, no. What Ethel had was an instinctinve, but previously unrealised, grasp of hyper physics akin to Mozart's genius in the field of music. One autumn morning Ethel, finishing off her 11 o'clock cup of tea, slurped the last mouthful and thought, 'ahhh, yes, that'd work' and announced her findings on the local video phone-in. Ethel made no money out of her discovery, she didn't want to - all she asked was that the engines based upon her ideas be named after her. Hence, the Etheldrive was born.
Now that Humanity had a practical way to travel at immense velocities impossible in normal space, the design and construction of new ships was begun. Navigational techniques were worked upon as the day approached when the first ship, the SS Magnificent, was built in Earth orbit. the crew were trained intensively, the ship's systems tested and re-tested and the course was computed over and over until there could be no chance of a mistake. The ship was ready.
And was promptly eaten by a monstrous deep space Gulper, lurking just beyond Neptune. A probe shadowing the Magnificent captured the whole thing on camera and relayed it back to Earth, leaving a horrified and shocked mission control silent, until the toilet cleaner chirped up, 'Well, none of you expected THAT did you? Wotcher!'
Fortunately, Gulpers were very rare and it was an enormously unlucky chance that had led to the demise of the Magnificent. Future ships were wary of the mysterious creatures and the initial sensor readings from the probe had provided valuable data. More ships were built and began to reach the stars. And the stain if Humanity spread slowly away from Earth and outwards, through the galaxy. Habitable planets identified centuries earlier were targeted and an aggressive wave of exploration and colonisation began.
In the van of the surge of expansion was the Navy. No fancy titles, no grand names - just the Navy. They were an old-fashioned bunch, tough and hardy but more willing than most to look beyond the garden wall. The Navy was used as the instrument of Man's desire to conquer. Not that there was much conquering to be done; the galaxy was surprisingly bereft of intelligent life. Oh, there was plenty of flora and fauna, but not much that could be described as sentient. Until, one day, an intelligent form of life was discovered. Dinosaurs. A whole planet populated with them.
At first, cordial greetings were exchanged and amicable relations established. However, when representatives of the dinosaurs came to visit Earth, they were shocked by the countless museum exhibits of dinosaur remains. One horrified dinosaur inspected a deinonychus skeleton and roared out 'Noooooo!!!!! Uncle Fred!' (The fact that the skeleton was 80 million years old didn't seem to cut any ice, 'There's a definite family resemblance' another dino noted.) It was all downhill from there. One misunderstanding led to another and soon a full scale war was raging. The Navy, with its ability to bombard a planetary surface from orbit, ended the conflict quickly. The Navy had proved its efficiency in ruthless fashion.
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polson
Member
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 21:17
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Awwww. Now I want to go find some kids and convince them there's a UFO in my back yard.
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babel
Member
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 21:17
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Church Wars!
Recently the local churches have been waging a kind of battle for hearts and minds and souls. We're talking street corner preaching. We're talking leaflets through doors. We're talking descending en masse on the local poplace. Regular readers (gods help you) of this blog will have seen me document some of these happenings in the past - well - it kicked off this evening.
I was walking home and saw, to my dismay, that one of the local churches - I think it was the one that had the Easter thing, with the rapping and dancing and that twitching Jesus nailed to the cross (disturbing - why did they have to make it twitch?) had arrived at Albert Road for a mass door-knocking. Adults accompanied by kids, in squads of three, hitting loads of houses simultaneously. Intensive!
But . . . what's this? Holy moly. On the OTHER side of the road . . . Jehovah's Witnesses in equally large numbers! Crikey. They hurried along upon seeing their rivals and started to fan out. The other church ceased their knocking and turned to regard their rivals icily. I swear that the whole street fell silent. There was no traffic . . no planes overhead . . . hell, even the birds stopped singing.
The scene was set.
The fire-and-brimstone preacher, featured in this blog earlier this year, advanced across the road. His counterpart from the Jehovah's lot strode out to meet him. And in the background, paraphrased from 'High Noon', you could just discern on the breeze 'do not forsake me oh my Lord-a, on this our preachin' da-ayy . . '
'Afternoon, Brother' the fire and brimstone guy said.
'Afternoon, ' replied Mr J. Witness, somewhat warily.
'Busy preaching the Lord's word, Brother?' asked Brimstone.
J. witness rolled his eyes. 'We're distributing our Watchtower leaflets, yes.'
Brimstone smiled a smile devoid of much mirth. 'My preaching is done direct to people, not through the pages of a magazine, Brother.'
By now J. Witness was becoming visibly irritated. 'Better my magazines than you shouting at people outside the tube station . . '
'Carrying the Lord's message!'
' . . . harrassing people who've jsut got home from work . . .'
'Doing my good works, bringing the sinners to the Light!'
' . . .oh this is pointless, isn't? You're not listening to me!'
Brimstone paused in his rhetoric. He looked sorrowfully at J. Witness. 'No Brother, I'm not. but you should be listening to me.' They both looked up and saw that everyone had come out of their houses to watch, to Brimstone's delight. He beamed at his audience and spread his arms wide.
'Brothers and Sisters! I bring you great news - the news that Jesus wants YOU!'
('So do the T.V. licence people, for non-payment!' some wag shouted out)
'He wants to save you Sinners from eternal damnation!'
('Oh, he's going to give Leyton Orient some decent players this year?' another voice yelled)
'I implore you, ' Brimstone continued, undeterred, 'Come along to our Church and . . .'
He was interrupted by Mrs Shah from number 57. She'd walked right up to him, unnoticed.
'Excuse me,' she said, rather politely.
'Yes Sister, how can this Lord's servant help you?'
She looked him in the eye with a gimlet gaze. 'I am not your Sister.'
Brimstone nodded mutely, caught in the headlights of the formidable pensioner.
'I have often seen you preach and I have often read the Watchtower magazines your friends (J. Witness quirked an eyebrow at this but said nothing) give out. And I ask you this.'
The street held its collective breath.
'Their magazine has a crossword puzzle. What can you offer that is better than that?'
Brimstone gulped. He attempted a reply. 'Eter - eternal life in the, um . .the garden of . . um . . .'
Mrs Singh seemed to grow a couple of inches in height. 'Two across, two words, four and three. Something - off. '
Brimstone beat a hasty retreat followed by his flock. The Witnesses jeered - a jeering that was silenced by Mrs Shah wheeling to face them.
'And your bloody magazine is crap and the last one didn't have a crossword. Put it back in, please. Does this issue have a crossword puzzle inside?'
J. Witness shook his head.
'Well, bugger off then and don't come back until there is a crossword puzzle. I like my crossword puzzles.' Mrs Shah turned and stormed off back to number 57, an unhappy woman. The Witnesses left and went home, leaving the street quiet and undisturbed once more. We were free of the doorstep invaders.
And as I passed number 57 I saw Mrs Shah at her window - and she winked at me.
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babel
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 21:18
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Something else from long ago . . .
He lay restless, sleepless, mind racing, unable to remain still for e'en a moment. The walls . . .the walls, pressing in, crowding in, in, in, far away, near, near, far away, impossibly twisted through the dimensions . . . And the shadows. Ever the shadows, crawling, creeping from their hiding places, slowly softly stealthily.
They were not his friends.
The circled him, never drawing close, remaining beyond reach, watching him, leering at him. One stopped its circling and regarded him unkindly. No velvet-clad gaze, this . . . barbed wire and malignant intent laced the shadow's lengthy survey. And it spoke.
'We are more real than you.'
He stopped, shocked by the words. He was less real than shadows. He heard the words and the incontrovertible truth of them turned his heart to ice. He heard the shadows laughing as they danced about him, he saw his own pale flesh in the moonlight that shone in through the broken window pane. Flesh that became less substantial as he stared at it, flesh that burned in the feeble light.
Out of the corner of his eye a shape moved and he turned and it was his own reflection in a mirror. Eyes wide and wild, skin pulled taut, one corner of the mouth twitching. He stood, frozen in place as the face in front of him became less familiar and yet more familiar. It was him - and it was not him. Was this some aspect he had not seen before? This tortured, fell creature with eyes not full of intelligence, but of primal fear and flight and disgust?
He fell to his knees and the shadows ceased their dancing. They whispered, murmurs filling the room, too low to understand, too insistent to ignore. He fell onto his side and with a single sob, said:
'Stop.'
And the shadows let him be.
He lay in the moonlight, foetally curled, shivering slightly (though the night was not cold.) Not a thought crossed his mind, not a hope filled his heart, not even a blink or a sneeze or a twitch.
'Oh, god . . . ' he uttered, at length, 'Oh god . .help me . . . '
He felt someone - something - lean close to his ear. 'Your gods are dead.'
'You destroyed them.'
The voice was soft, it was cruel; it was gentle, it was harsh; it was old, it was new-born; it was alien, it was . . . him.
'Your gods were many. And now they are none. Do you want to know what happened to them?'
He could not help himself. He nodded.
The voice, satisfied at the answer, continued.
'Your gods loved you. They loved you and they looked into your heart. And they saw the hatred you nursed there, the complete hatred and contempt you breed there - hatred and contempt for yourself.'
The voice paused and the room darkened and a chill descended and even the shadows retreated further into their lairs.
'You broke your god's hearts. They could not accept that that which they loved despised themself so much. And they died . . . they died. Destroyed by you.'
He felt tears running down his face. He wanted the voice to be wrong, wanted his gods to talk to him. He reached out to them.
And he was alone.
Apart from the voice.
'One day, one day . . . you will have a choice to make.'
The tears stopped and he listened.
'It will be in your power . . to save or damn the cosmos. All that you know. Past and present and future. And I know what you will do.'
'Damnation.'
'There is nothing else in your heart. No hope. No repentance. No redemption.'
'Just self pity and and terror and they will make you terrible.'
He lay still for a long, long while.
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polson
Member
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 21:29
Reply
Crossword puzzle. *lmao* I totally imagined that woman looked like my grandma. She's like 4 foot nothing and loves crossword puzzles.
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stevennorton
Member
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2009 23:34
Reply
So yea...
tl;dr
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babel
Member
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# Posted: 23 Apr 2009 05:51
Reply
not holding a gun to your head, Steven 
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